CITY HALL — Police should not have shot and killed a 66-year-old emotionally disturbed Bronx woman who charged an NYPD sergeant with a baseball bat, Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a City Hall press conference Wednesday.
"Deborah Danner should be alive right now. Period," de Blasio said.
No justice, no apologies.
Activists fighting for reform said Monday that an apology from an organization representing police chiefs for decades of brutality is nothing but empty rhetoric.
“The problem is that police continue to enforce racist and discriminatory laws and policies,” said Constance Malcolm, whose unarmed son, Ramarley Graham, 18, was shot to death by a cop in his Bronx home in 2012.
Who is the real Mayor Bill de Blasio?
Is he the ever-smiling mayor who stumbles from crisis to crisis? Or, is he a shrewd politician who believes he can bedazzle New Yorkers with rhetoric?
Mayor de Blasio has made a formal plea to the state legislature to amend Section 50-a of the New York State Civil Rights Law, which the NYPD has used to justify withholding disciplinary records of police officers who have been accused of misconduct. "Without significant changes to this statute, the city remains barred from providing New Yorkers with the transparency we deserve," the mayor said in a statement.
In the face of mounting criticism of his record on transparency, Mayor Bill de Blasio called for changing a state law that the city has said blocks the release of details about disciplinary actions taken against New York City police officers.
New Yorkers in 31 of the city's police precincts could soon get their local officer's phone number, part of a new NYPD program focused on neighborhood policing.
The broken windows policing policy came into existence nationwide in the early 80s, with the intent to reduce criminal activity in what were known as "disruptive environments.'
To speak on the dated and problematic nature of the policies are Alex Vitale, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, Nahal Zamani, Program Manager at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Anthonine Pierre, Community Organizer at the Brooklyn Movement Center.
Almost like clockwork, they keep coming: the highly publicized incidents connecting Black victims and police officers with guns. And every time, racial disparities in policing become part of the conversation, but rarely do we take time to dive into the roots and solutions of the issue.
Barely a week after the New York Police Department (NYPD) announced a disciplinary trial against Officer Richard Haste for his role in the shooting death of Ramarley Graham, a new surveillance video of the arrest and a lack of answers from city officials has prompted Graham's family and supporters to file a